The May 1816 decision to establish the (school section of) Hindoo College Calcutta “for the tuition of sons of respectable Hindus” was immediately recognized as a major development of great cultural and political significance. And yet, source material on its prehistory is very scanty, all of which comes from officials, chaplains and missionaries. No Indian associated with , or witness to, the College’s formation or in its service has left behind any account. Most of the accounts are more an exercise in screenplay writing than history proper. The question of the pre-history of Hindoo College is reopened here to take into account two important primary sources not noticed so far. These documents provide new information, deepen the perspective, and help construct a connected account of circumstances leading to Hindoo College.

A correction needs to be made in the printed text. Insert the dateline Calcutta 16th May 1816 at the top of the Appendix on page 297.

College of Fort William, Calcutta, which was opened in 1800, instructed the newly appointed East India Company officials in vernacular languages.The professors were all European, but their assistants, called Munshis, were native. In the College setting the master- slave relationship transcended the student- teacher relationship

In 1810, a student named Kennedy beat his teacher, Ananda Mohan Sharma, a Munshi in the Sanskrit-Bengali department.The native teacher’s crime was that the meaning he gave for a Bengali word did not match the meaning given in Fortster’s Bengali dictionary. As it turned out , subsequently Forster’s dictionary was not reprinted because it was declared to be full of errors.

In 1811, a student, Mr Collins,could not find a particular word in the dictionary.He then asked his teacher, Munshi Ghulam Hasan ,whose long and tedious explanation the Sahib could not quite comprehend. Thus annoyed, the student whipped his teacher.When asked to explain his conduct, Mr Collins wrote that ” he was not aware that these people were entitled to be consideed a Gentleman”.

Reference

Das, Sisir Kumar (1978) Sahibs and Munshis: An Account of the College of Fort William ( Calcutta: Papyrus, reprint 2001), pp.123-124.